marvelous for their pure poetry, for their music, for their imagery, and for their choice of words, but fortunately he did not write to amuse people or to please the publishers.
Walt Whitman has something to say to men, and is eager that men should listen. That they may hear the better, he “sings full-voiced his valiant and melodious songs.” Our duty, the duty of those who love him, is to distil from these full-voiced songs the poet’s thought—that which he entrusted lovingly to himself, to his comrades, to his followers, to all of us.
II
Why did Walt Whitman turn to the writing of verse? Because he was a man of letters by instinct? To win fame? Because there was nothing else that he could do? By no means. Walt Whitman, before becoming a poet, had been a worker, the son of a carpenter, able to saw logs and make tables. He was far from being one of those mosaicists in adjectives whose horizon is an inkstand and whose only goal is the favor of critics and of ladies:
Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me?
Did you seek the civilian’s peaceful and languishing rhymes? …
What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works,
